Chamberlain solo show brightens Artspace gallery

Artspace
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
Patrick Chamberlain: On Your MarkThrough June 26, 2010

Like his wife, sculptor Jessica Stockholder, painter Patrick Chamberlain is clearly enamored with color. On Your Mark is his first solo show of paintings—Chamberlain is a psychologist by profession—and it brightens Artspace's Gallery 1 with bold shapes and evident pleasure in applying paint to canvas.

Some of Chamberlain's compositions are rather minimalist, with oval shapes (I kept thinking of martini olives) juxtaposed with harder-edged forms. Of these, I thought "For Leo" worked best. In this painting, Chamberlain feathers the edges of his forms with slashes of paint, creating an energy that allows the disparate shapes to cohere as a whole.

Where he is less successful is in works where the various elements seem to sit side by side without fully relating to one another. This is the case to some extent with "Isolate Flecks," the dozen-paneled work that takes up the better part of the longest wall. The composition is h together by a recurring background motif of wide yellow and gold vertical stripes. Flowing through the work over the various panels is a sequence of abstract -- for the most part -- forms. Within this sequence, Chamberlain appears to be trying out different ideas, some of which are interesting and others less so. In one spot he paints Roy Lichtenstein-esque halftone dots, in another spot appears a stencil of a fern frond. These elements do appear isolated, as per the work's title, but not in a good way. It was hard to find a thread that tied them together into a compositional gestalt.


With "Fully Hokusai," on the other hand, Chamberlain's muscular mark making and jubilant color choices combine to generate a natural and nature-like vibrancy. Such is also the case with the untitled painting on the facing wall. Within this abstract painting, Chamberlain has created the illusion of depth, variations of light and the sense of vigorous motion.

Artspace shows open this Thursday evening

Artspace
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
Patrick Chamberlain: On Your Mark
Christina Gunderson: Pigeon
Mister Never: In Never We Trust
Michelle Levante: Bodies of Trees
Will Holub: Lucky Strike: World War II Army Air Corps Veterans
Eileen Doktorski: Artifacts of Affluence
June 8—July 17, 2010.
On Your Mark will be on display through June 26, 2010.
Public Opening: Thurs., June 10, 6—8 p.m.

Press release

Artspace announces five new solo exhibitions with works by Connecticut, New York, and California-based artists. The five exhibitions of Eileen Doktorski, Christina Gundersen, Will Holub, Michelle Levante, and Mister Never will open on Thurs., June 10 from 6-8 p.m. Common themes that emerge throughout the Artspace galleries are correlations between beauty and decay, viscera and tactility, and memory and sentiment. Patrick Chamberlain's exhibition, On Your Mark, is also on view through June 26, 2010.

Gallery 1 • Patrick Chamberlain's exhibition, On Your Mark, represents the artist's first solo show. Chamberlain's abstract paintings illuminate the gallery with hoppy colors and tangential lines and shapes.

Gallery 3 • Pigeon, by Christina Gundersen, is a site-specific installation of photographic shadows that fill the gallery with an ethereal presence and inquisitive arrangement.

Gallery 4 • In Never We Trust, by Mister Never, comments on the practices of financial institutions to produce negative capital, which is also a solid metaphor for an artist's own struggle to achieve artistic merit.

The Long Wall • Bodies of Trees, by Michelle Levante, is a series of photographic diptych images exploring mans' perverse relationship to nature, beauty, and juxtaposition. The exhibition represents the first showing of this new series of work.

Gallery 5 • Lucky Strike: World War II Army Air Corps Veterans, by Will Holub, is a series of paintings that recount the World War II era from a familial perspective and functions as testaments to the changing face of war and the global economy.

Gallery 7 • Artifacts of Affluence, by Eileen Doktorski, is a series of castings from landfill terrain, bringing the subject of waste into the light for the viewer's closer reflection.

Thursday night opening at Artspace; 7 new solo shows

Artspace
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
Patrick Chamberlain: On Your Mark
Sarah Bliss: Journey from Longjiang
Jennifer Crupi: Beyond Words: Expressive Gestures
Ben Blanc: Worlds Apart
John O'Donnell: PG-13
Miguel Trelles: Trámite; Hsiao
Jeff Slomba: Sound Change
May 6—June 6, 2010.
On Your Mark will be on display through June 5, 2010.
Public Opening: Thurs., May 6, 6—8 p.m.

Press release

Artspace announces seven new solo exhibitions with works by Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island based artists. Patrick Chamberlain's exhibition, On Your Mark opened on Apr. 1, 2010. The six exhibitions of Sarah Bliss, Jennifer Crupi, Ben Blanc, John O'Donnell, Miguel Trelles, and Jeff Slomba will open on Thurs., May 6, from 6—8 p.m. Common themes that emerge throughout the Artspace galleries are correlations between synthetic and natural forms, the history of labor and cultural practices, and cultural excess and technological evolution.

Gallery 1 • Patrick Chamberlain's exhibition, On Your Mark, represents the artist's first solo show. Chamberlain's abstract paintings illuminate Gallery 1 with hoppy colors and tangential lines and shapes.

Gallery 2 • Journey from Longjiang, by Sarah Bliss, utilizes the economic history of Artspace: a former furniture store, to comment on labor and transportation practices overseas. As furniture production is outsourced to Asia, US jobs are lost, and the materials that are used to transport the products are land filled or burned to create waste and highly toxic gases. Bliss's video serves as a trace of this trans-oceanic journey, and her sculptures contain a lifeless beauty, one that is both delicate and volumetric.

Gallery 3 • Beyond Words: Expressive Gestures, by Jennifer Crupi, is a group of interactive, prosthetic-like proposals for instruments of gestural expression. Each sculpture imagines and presents a different outlet for stress, excitement, and the desire to communicate through body language and self-discovery. By viewing and interacting with the work, the artist seeks to illicit the underlying reasons for our seemingly casual gestures.

Gallery 4 • Worlds Apart, by Ben Blanc, is a series of abstract sculptures that evoke natural and man-made materials as organic forms re-emerge from synthetic materials. Blanc is the founder of Ben Blanc Studio; he collects materials, explores various artistic processes, and reinterprets his design research. Blanc's work often exudes a plastic quality as objects oscillate, shift, and reach a delicate balance.

Gallery 5 • PG-13, by John O'Donnell, is an installation that appropriates various forms of popular media-plastic toys from the discount bin, blockbuster movies, magazines with pictures of food, bad air-brushed pornography, and athletes such as Michael Jordan. O'Donnell implicates a culture over-crowded with material excess, popular icons, and kitsch objects. Many of the forms that the artist chooses recount a connection to childhood in the 90s, an interest in Surrealism, and a concern for a post-industrial society obsessed with blogging, commenting, and crafting assemblages. The result is an installation of personal reference that becomes obscured and expanded upon by each viewer.

Long Wall • Trámite; Hsiao, by Miguel Trelles, is a series of paintings that take a humorous stance on the compositions of Li's Xiaojing tu, Trámite. In the artist's re-interpretation, the "demons" scroll, which constitutes an ethnic caricature of the "other" in 13th Century China, is used to describe a 21st Century Latino American population. The paintings cast a playful air on the traditional allegory and illustrate the varied complexities and stereotypes used to misrepresent a class of people.

Gallery 7 • Sound Change, by Jeff Slomba, is a series of investigations concerned with acts of selective preservation in response to the evolution of technology. The artist introduces scale, context, and gravitational shifts to de-familiarize the viewer with common archetypes of seashells, cassette tapes, speakers, and concrete blocks. The artist reveals their structural arrangements as being dynamic, layered, and malleable forms whose narrative continues to trace cultural production.

Chamberlain exhibit opens Thursday at Artspace

Artspace
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
Patrick Chamberlain: On Your Mark
Apr. 1—June 5, 2010.
Public Opening: Thurs., Apr. 1, 6—8 p.m.

Press release

Artspace is pleased to present, On Your Mark, a solo exhibition of new and recent paintings by Patrick Chamberlain. The exhibition recalls childhood reverence, playful gestures, and vibrant lines and color. The exhibition is on view in Gallery 1 from Mar. 30—June 26, 2010. The public reception for this exhibition is Thurs., Apr.l 1, from 6—8 p.m.

On Your Mark presents the largest exhibition to date of Chamberlain's radiant and evocative abstract paintings. Chamberlain will debut a 12-panel painting in addition to nine other inquisitive works. Deeply invested in the techniques of his craft, Chamberlain paints lines, shapes, and textures that present viewers with multiple points of entry into his alluring world. Although Chamberlain's work varies in scale and composition, his emotional use of color is consistent throughout. Intense areas of color announce themselves without apology; hot pinks, turquoise blues, pulsating yellows, and flamingo pinks punctuate his canvases.

While Chamberlain's works frequently evoke natural forms such as waves, trees, flowers and fields, ambiguity lies at the core of his artistic practice. Bold pockets of color are often tempered by exacting line work and an attention to surface and texture, revealing deeper convictions about the conceptual processes of painting. His imagery seems to linger "in the between," so to speak; it's as if the subjects presented are about to fall, shrink, roll, or slip into some distant, remarkable place.

The On Your Mark exhibition catalogue will include contributions by poet and author Jeremy Sigler, and Artspace Curator, Liza Statton (forthcoming).

Multiple shows opening at Artspace this Thursday, March 25

Artspace
50 Orange St, New Haven, (203) 772-2709
Patrick Chamberlain: On Your Mark
Lisa Dillin: Office Units: Surrogate Prototypes
Shannon Gagne: Breaking Roots
Hong Seon Jang: Rainbow Forest
Karla Knight: Life in Space
Robin Press: Memory Project I
David Barton: Artistic Syncretism: African Dream Paintings
Through May 1, 2010.
On Your Mark will be on display through June 5, 2010.
Public Opening: Thurs., Mar. 25, 6-8 p.m.
Opening for Patrick Chamberlain's On Your Mark: Thurs., Apr. 1, 6-8 p.m.

Press release

Artspace announces seven new solo exhibitions with works by Connecticut, New York, and Israeli artists. The 6 exhibitions of Lisa Dillin, Shannon Gagne, Hong Seon Jang, Karla Knight, Robin Press, and David Barton will open on Thurs., Mar. 25., from 6-8 p.m. Patrick Chamberlain's exhibition, On Your Mark, will open on Thurs., Apr. 1, 2010.

Common themes that emerge throughout the Artspace galleries are correlations between mark making and synaesthetics, conformity and spontaneity, and memory and decay.

Gallery 1 • Patrick Chamberlain's exhibition, On Your Mark, represents the artist's first solo show. Chamberlain's abstract paintings illuminate Gallery 1 with hoppy colors and tangential lines and shapes.

Gallery 2 • Office Units: Surrogate Prototypes, by Lisa Dillin, is a life size office unit that opens from below the desk and into a small cave. Dillin's work engages in the emotional consequences of living in a manmade environment and provides a sculptural reprieve into an amorphous space.

Gallery 3 • Breaking Roots, by Shannon Gagne, is a delicate installation composed of altered baby food jars, clay forms, and tree roots. Gagne explores connections between organic forms, family lineage, and human mortality.

Gallery4 • Rainbow Forest, by Hong Seon Jang, is a series of sculptures and drawings that evoke a sense of celebration and pathos in their dense materiality. Jang's works are constructed entirely from found and recycled materials.

The Long Wall • Life in Space, by Karla Knight, is an on-going series of geometrical drawings of biomorphic forms that the artist has been exploring for over 20 years. This exhibition marks the first time the series will be shown in its' entirety.

Gallery 5,6 • Memory Project I, by Robin Press, is both an audio installation and series of silk screens that investigate the mechanics of memory through the process of recording interviews with anonymous subjects and overlaying spoken word with images.

Gallery 7 • Artistic Syncretism: African Dream Paintings, by David Barton is a series of paintings based on personal descriptions of a friend (now deceased) who studied in Central Africa. His pictures are visual translations of the descriptions of pagan worship with incorporated elements of Islam and Christianity.